Let us begin at the simplest point. What is a comic physiognomy?
Where does a ridiculous expression of the face come from? And what
is, in this case, the distinction between the comic and the ugly?
Thus stated, the question could scarcely be answered in any other
than an arbitrary fashion. Simple though it may appear, it is, even
now, too subtle to allow of a direct attack. We should have to begin
with a definition of ugliness, and then discover what addition the
comic makes to it; now, ugliness is not much easier to analyse than
is beauty. However, we will employ an artifice which will often
stand us in good stead. We will exaggerate the problem, so to speak,
by magnifying the effect to the point of making the cause visible.
Suppose, then, we intensify ugliness to the point of deformity, and
study the transition from the deformed to the ridiculous.

Now, certain deformities undoubtedly possess over others the sorry
privilege of causing some persons to laugh; some hunchbacks, for
instance, will excite laughter. Without at this point entering into
useless details, we will simply ask the reader to think of a number
of deformities, and then to divide them into two groups: on the one
hand, those which nature has directed towards the ridiculous; and on
the other, those which absolutely diverge from it. No doubt he will
hit upon the following law: A deformity that may become comic is a
deformity that a normally built person, could successfully imitate.

Is it not, then, the case that the hunchback suggests the appearance
of a person who holds himself badly? His back seems to have
contracted an ugly stoop. By a kind of physical obstinacy, by
rigidity, in a word, it persists in the habit it has contracted. Try
to see with your eyes alone. Avoid reflection, and above all, do not
reason. Abandon all your prepossessions; seek to recapture a fresh,